Stranger At My Door
by Nezuko
Summary: When Genma was 17, he shared a torturer's cell with a chuuninn from Konoha who was as crazy as a loon. A year and a half later, guess who shows up at Genma's door. Scarlet Spiral fic.


**Stranger At My Door**

_by Nezuko, Prince of Rats_

_This is a work of derivative fiction based on the manga "Naruto" by Kishimoto Masashi. The Genma and Raidou and the world in which they live are the property of Kishimoto-sensei. Taisei is an original character created by sna._

_AN: Set in the world of __Scarlet Spiral, this takes place approximately one and a half years after __Too Sick To Pray, when Genma is nineteen and Taisei is fifteen and a half._

_Written for sna. Happy Birthday sna! I really hope you like it._

_ooo _

Genma was relaxing in his apartment on one of those rare and delightful days on which there was nothing he needed to do. He had no missions scheduled for another two days. His paperwork from the last one was already turned in--thanks in no small part to Raidou having nagged him mercilessly until he got it done. He even had clean laundry (his neighbor's annoying insistence that Genma do wash once a week was a factor in that, too.) It was raining and a little dreary out, but with a few extra lights on, and a good book--_All the Tea in Tea Country: A History of the Tea Growing Regions_--Genma was in his own little world.

He was deeply absorbed in reading about how the high acid level of the soil in the upper valleys of the western mountains in Tea Country were one of the reasons tea from that region was so highly prized, when a knock came on his door. It wasn't Raidou, he knew, because first off, Raidou was away on a mission, and secondly, if he were there, the knock would have been simultaneous with his entering the room and saying whatever he'd come to say. So not Raidou. And not Takeshi because he always knocked in a staccato rhythm that was a coded signal he and Genma and Raidou had used on a mission to River Country once, and that had, for reasons none of them could agree on, become a sort of standing joke with the three of them.

It wasn't Midoriko, either, since she was also on a mission. She'd come to have a little "I'm going on a mission" nightcap with Genma two days ago, and he wasn't expecting her back for several more days at least. So of the people who were likely to a) know where Genma lived and have access to it and b) be home and know that he was home to be visited, that left only Kakashi. And Kakashi never visited. Or at least almost never. Close enough to never to make it a vanishingly small probability that it was Kakashi on the other side of the door.

Of course it could be Yuki or some other administrative type, here with an urgent mission summons, Genma supposed, and he groaned at the idea as he levered himself off the bed and went to answer the door.

"Coming," he called, dropping his book face down on his bed and padding barefoot across the room. He opened his door to reveal a cheerfully grinning young man with an unruly shock of midnight blue hair and unsettling bright green eyes.

"Hiyas, Genma!"

"Taisei? What are you...?" Genma stared. It was Kobayashi Taisei, the same boy who'd been imprisoned with him in Iwagakure a year and a half ago. The boy who'd been so irreparably damaged by his experience in the hands of the Stone Ninja that up until just a few weeks ago he'd been confined to the psychiatric wing at Konoha's hospital.

Genma'd been to visit the boy fairly often, after he himself had recovered enough from his own injuries to go visiting. Sometimes they'd turned him away. Sometimes he'd had to sneak in. Sometimes, especially in more recent months, he'd brought Raidou along, and the three of them had given the psychiatric staff the slip long enough to take Taisei out to a park for some fresh air and sunshine, a conversation or two with the plant life, and a cone of green tea ice cream.

In that time Taisei had grown from a malnourished and awkward adolescent into a thin but muscular young man. He'd gained in height, too, so that while compared to Genma's 181 centimeters he was still a good bit shorter, there was no mistaking him for a child anymore.

But even though Genma had known it was likely Taisei was going to be set free from his psychiatric confinement at last, he'd still never considered the possibility that the boy would end up here.

"I wanted to show you my nifty armor. See?" Taisei spun in a little circle, demonstrating the sleek black and bone ANBU uniform he wore. "It's just like yours! Only smaller because you're taller, Genma," Taisei continued, nodding seriously as if he were imparting a grave truth to his friend.

"Where did you..." Genma started to ask, and interrupted himself. "I mean, you're..." He gestured at Taisei a little helplessly, indicating the uniform.

"I got it from the quartermaster downstairs," Taisei answered. "Only I don't have my mask yet, I have to go back and get that tomorrow. And he gave me an apartment too, only I didn't want to stay in there right now because I wanted to see you, and you don't know where it is yet, and I don't think the ficus in the hall would tell you. It's very secretive and it might even tell you someone else's apartment instead of mine, and that would be mean."

"You joined ANBU," Genma said, in a soft voice. _"Why?_ Taisei?" The feelings under the question were myriad, but chief amongst them, Genma realized, was a feeling not unlike what his elder sister Yumiko must have felt when Genma showed up at her house with a scarlet spiral freshly tattooed on his left biceps. Yumiko had slapped him, then burst into tears.

"Can I come in? It's raining and darkish, and I thought you wouldn't like that, so I brought you these." Taisei grinned even more brightly, with the hopeful look in his eye of a child offering his mother the mud pie he'd slaved over, and held out a basket containing at least a dozen small light bulbs.

"I..." Genma stared harder. And blinked. There was an unaccustomed feeling in his chest all of a sudden, a tightening in his sinuses, that he didn't quite know what to make of; there was Taisei, standing at his door, offering him a basket of tools to banish the darkness. One or two people knew Genma didn't much care for pitch dark, and maybe even guessed it had to do with Genma's past imprisonment and torture, but Taisei had _been_ there, and Taisei _knew_ about the consuming darkness of that hell hole of a prison in Earth Country.

"Here, okay?" Taisei thrust the basket at Genma again, and Genma took it, stepping back and still staring at Taisei in his uniform. Then he broke into a grin.

"Come on in, Taisei. I'll make some tea, and I think I have some jam for toast or something."

"Yay, jam!" Taisei said, heading in and throwing himself on Genma's bed as if it were his own.

And now there was one more person Genma could count on who might come knock on his door.


End file.
